As I read this in 1999, with the wonderful hindsight of the 22 intervening
years, a saying kept running through my mind: "Pride goeth before
a fall"
There are some who claim that activities which are continuously repeated seem to last for longer times than new experiences taking the same actual period. I've found that in my case the contrary holds true. Two examples come to mind.
(1.) My grandmother lives in Battle Creek, a two-hour drive from our house. But we've visited her so often through the years that the trip seems extremely short compared to two-hour drives in areas I've never visited.
(2.) The first day of school never seems to end, and at that time each year, I always wonder how I'll ever make it. But as the year progresses, the apparent time of each day shortens considerably as I repeat the schedule over and over again. (this can't be the fifth week already!)
October 5, 1977
It's surprising to me how little we actually notice about things. I decided to draw a plan of this school as a little project of my own, but when I sat down to start, there were only a very few features of the building that I could recall from memory well enough to draw, and now I have to carefully study the whole place to get just the basic information I need. I've attended Northville High since 9th grade, and I thought the plan would be a snap. But now I've discovered that the mind won't remember anything unless it is expressly told to.
October 6, 1977
I've observed that things that are usually done under the same circumstances seem much easier to accomplish under new circumstances. I decided to come to school very early this morning to work on my map of the building (see 10/5 entry), but whereas the sun is usually well on its way into the sky at my normal departure time, it was just starting to rise when I left. As I was riding my 10-speed up the strenuous hills on the route, I noticed that I was laboring much less than I ordinarily would. I've concluded, therefore, that whenever I do something new, the amount of physical effort is less than after I have done that thing many times in succession. Upon first glance, this statement seems to contradict the entry I made on October 4 which states that the apparent time of an activity decreases after many repetitions. But that is a confusion of time with effort. Perhaps the apparent time of an activity is inversely proportional to the effort it takes -- the greater the time the lesser the effort, and vice-versa.
October 7, 1977
I've realized now that I can learn anything in the world as long as two vital conditions are satisfied: (1) The proper explanatory material and/or instruction is supplied, and, more importantly, (2) I want to learn it. My inability to cope with certain subject areas are the result of attitudes I must have developed years ago, and not inferiority of intellect. The problem now is to break these patterns, a process that will probably take many years, and, again, the steadfast will on my part to do so.
October 11, 1977
Realizing that previously developed fears make learning difficult, I think that this hypothesis can also be expanded in such a way as to explain why things done for the first time seem to take very little effort. When I embark on a brand new experience of any kind, I have absolutely no fears or inhibitions to make it difficult mentally, but also this absence of fear seems to make the physical aspect of the act less strenuous.
October 13, 1977
On the day that I got my new glasses I had imagined that all types of censure and ostracism would be directed at me at school. I was wondering how I'd ever be able to survive amidst the jeers. But when I actually did return, no one seemed to notice, or to care, for that matter. What was even more surprising was that persons at this school who've known me for more than two years hardly paid any attention, either. Upon observation of this phenomenon I was able to realize that the main person who torments me is myself. Indeed, this was a revolutionary thought, because it enables me to start discarding other petty fears that have no rationality whatsoever.
October 19, 1977
When I took the PSAT yesterday, (which, incidentally, is the reason this entry was not made yesterday as it should have) I discovered the great truth in the saying that "the obvious escapes us." While completing the mathematical section I came upon a problem concerning two boys who have so many marbles and how many they'd have if one gave the other a certain amount. I felt it would be easy to solve, provided that the equations could be set up, which I did. When the solution finally came out I was sure it was correct, and I didn't hesitate to record it on the answer sheet. Well, at the end of the test I happened to overhear a discussion of the problem, where one student said they had achieved an answer different from mine by the process of "trial and error." I began to correct them on their error when I tried the answer in the problem and found them to be correct and myself to be wrong. Imagine! I set up this whole system of equations and failed to reach the correct answer, while they just guessed it out and succeeded. It was very much inwardly demeaning.
October 25, 1977
Recently it has seemed to me that every second of my time has some task that I should be, or would like to be doing. In years past, when outside schoolwork was at a minimum, I'd often find myself bestowed with long hours of nothing to do. But with the start of my junior year, not only has my homework at least trebled; I seem to have simultaneously taken up several hobbies that consume much of the time in which I should be doing that work, such as playing the piano and learning to play pool. Perhaps the adoption of these activities is truly coincidental, but I tend to believe that they are subconscious efforts on my part to find a good excuse for not doing my assigned work. Maybe the work isn't even all that difficult, but my stubborn procrastination makes it seem very much so.
October 27, 1977
In my Newtonian physics class yesterday, I felt as though a bubble of reluctance to learning had just popped, a bubble that kept me from thoroughly understanding the apparently complex but intrinsically simple equations concerning the laws of motion. It happened during an experiment concerning the force necessary to cause a given mass to swing in a circular path. After gathering the data our lab group was discussing its significance with Mr. Sharrar. All of a sudden, I wondered why I'd never been able to fully comprehend the concepts of proportionality that play such an important role in the derivation of physics equations. It's so easy, but I let the difficult appearance of the notation delude me into a state of incompetence. Letting scientific double-talk obscure the actual facts that exist has got to be the main reason that most people find science so difficult to understand.
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